


walk a mile in someone else's shoes

by imposterhuman



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (because afghanistan was not fun for tony), (its gotta hurt guys), (lets not gloss over that), Aftermath of Torture, Arc Reactor, Bodyswap, Chronic Pain, Gen, Hurt Tony Stark, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Steve Rogers Is a Good Bro, Switching bodies, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, all the tropes really, bc why not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 12:20:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16555652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imposterhuman/pseuds/imposterhuman
Summary: body swap au!after a battle with amora, the avengers all get body swappedonly, tony hasn't told anyone about his chronic pain issues, and steve gets a nasty surpriseft. tony moping and natasha being a friendly murderbottw: mentions of torture and chronic pain





	walk a mile in someone else's shoes

**Author's Note:**

> okay so the swaps are:  
> tony -> thor  
> steve -> tony  
> thor -> bruce  
> bruce -> clint  
> clint -> natasha  
> natasha -> steve
> 
> also i wrote this in like an hour so dont judge me

Tony Stark really fucking hated magic.

The Avengers were battling some Asgardian knockoff Loki, right down to the garish green color scheme and odd relationship with Thor. Amora, Thor had called her. Tony didn't particularly care. All he wanted was a goddamn drink, a nap, and coffee, not necessarily in that order.

“C’mon, wizard lady,” Clint complained, on the same wavelength as Tony. “Can we take a pause and resume this tomorrow?”

Amora looked almost amused, but her smile promised pure evil. “I suppose,” she said lightly. “I’ll just leave you with this parting gift!” She shot off a bolt of lime green magic that ricocheted off of each Avenger in quick succession.

Tony’s mind went foggy. “What’s happening?” he shouted. Only, it wasn’t his voice.

It was Thor’s.

“What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck,” he chanted quietly to himself. “Is everyone else okay? It’s Tony, by the way, I’m either body swapped with Thor or I’m hallucinating again.”

“My money’s on body swapped, considering I appear to be in your body. It’s Steve, by the way.”

“This is worse than Budapest,” Nat’s voice said over coms. “I’m Clint.”

“This is  _ not  _ worse than Budapest, Birdbrain,” Steve’s authoritative voice rang out. “And it’s Natasha.”

“Aye, friends, we appear to have been hit with some very powerful magic.” Thor’s Asgardian speech in Bruce’s mild voice had Tony bowled over with laughter.

“Clint, you wear your pants too tight,” Bruce said, as Clint.

“Aside from the obvious issue, is everyone okay?” Steve-as-Tony sounded more responsible than Tony ever could. Affirmatives rolled in over the coms. “Let’s go back to the tower, then, and we’ll figure it out from there.” The Iron Man suit took off, then crashed into the side of a building.

“Cap?” Tony said in Thor’s deep voice. “I suggest you walk.”

\-----

Tony had done a good job of concealing his panic with the other Avengers, but as he sat in the corner of the quinjet, he felt himself start to freak out. What if Steve messed with the arc reactor? Tony hadn’t been very forthcoming, and if Steve acted on his curiosity… well, it wouldn’t end well for Tony/Steve.

Thor’s body was possibly the only upside. With Steve in Tony’s body, Tony was finally taller than the good captain. Thor also had the added benefit of a reprieve from Tony’s chronic pain. There was no arc reactor, no reduced lung capacity, no pressure on breaks and fractures than never healed right. Tony felt lighter than ever without the pain pulling him down.

That thought train sent him back into a panic.  _ Steve  _ was stuck with his chronic pain. With the serum, he probably hadn’t had pain this long lasting in a while, maybe ever. Tony hadn’t taken painkillers since he sobered up, scared of a new addiction, but he figured his body could deal if that meant Steve wasn’t suffering as much.

The quinjet landed and JARVIS greeted them all, as usual. Tony-as-Thor stepped forward.

“J, full diagnostics on all of us, and contact Strange,” he said. “Tell them it's an emergency.”

JARVIS, ever learning, understood straight away what had happened. “Yes, Sir,” he replied.

“Come on,” Tony said. “Let me do some scans in the lab. Steve, you’re going to have to be my hands, Thor’s fingers are too damn big for my machines.”

Another reason they needed to get back to themselves as soon as possible, Tony realized. He wouldn’t be able to do many repairs in this state, especially because most of his systems were attuned to his biometrics.

The Avengers dutifully followed Tony. It was weird to see  _ himself  _ walking along besides him, making conversation with Thor-as-Bruce about  _ magic _ .

“Go on in,” Tony said when they got to the lab. “JARVIS will show you the scanners. Cap, stay here for a second?” Steve nodded, and the other Avengers filed into the lab.

“What’s up, Tony?” Steve asked, words sounding strange out of Tony’s mouth.

“Third drawer of my desk, override code 1991. It’ll help with the pain. Don’t take more than one every 8 to 12 hours, okay?” Tony said in a rush.

“Thanks,” Steve said. “You should see a doctor, though. This much pain isn’t normal, should you even be fighting like this?”

Tony blanched but schooled a smile onto Thor’s unfamiliar features. “It’s fine,” he said. “Scan time!” He didn’t give Steve time to respond before he threw himself wholeheartedly into science.

He did see Steve take the pills, though.

\-----

“The spell should wear off on its own in by the end of the day,” Strange said, looking mildly inconvenienced. Apparently, they had interrupted his learning of a difficult spell, and now he had to restart the ritual.

“So we’re stuck like this all day?” Clint said, with more emotion in Natasha’s voice than usual.

“That is what I said, yes,” Strange drawled.

“My gratitude, Sorcerer,” Thor said loudly. Tony figured he was going for his usual booming voice, but, in Bruce’s voice, it just sounded like yelling.

Tony sighed. “Is there nothing you can do, Strange?” He still hadn’t gotten used to hearing Thor’s voice instead of his own, and it had already been several hours (talkative ones, too, because they had to debrief SHIELD).

“Sorry, Tony, but no. Amora may be utterly incompetent, but this is a dangerous spell. If I were to try to reverse it and something went wrong, you could be stuck like this forever.”

Steve paled. “Yeah, we can wait,” he said quickly.

Tony was a little hurt, but he played it off with a joke. “My body that bad, Cap?” he laughed. “Because let me tell you, people would pay to swap spots with you right now.”

Steve looked uncomfortable. “It just hurts, that’s all.”

Natasha-as-Steve narrowed her eyes, her spy like expression out of place on Steve’s wholesome face. “Did you get checked out after the battle?” she asked. “Tony has a habit of skipping medical, you’re probably just feeling bruises from last week.”

“It’s not that,” Steve said, shaking his head. “It’s the reactor, it hurts like hell.”

All heads in the room swiveled to stare at Tony. “It’s not that bad, Steve, seriously,” there was an edge of warning in his tone.

“I don’t know how you do it, Tony, because it  _ is  _ that bad.”

“Well, it's lab time!” Tony said, injecting enthusiasm into his voice that he didn’t feel.

 

Nobody protested, sensing Tony’s discomfort with the situation. 

 

Strange departed soon after, with a perfunctory  _ don’t try to mess with the spell _ .

 

“What the hell do we do now?” Clint asked.

 

“We wait,” Steve replied simply, closing his eyes. 

 

\-----

A few hours after Tony had disappeared to the lab, the rest of the Avengers went to Steve, who had been napping, trying to ignore the pain.

“Did he give you the pills?” Bruce asked in Clint’s voice. Steve nodded. “Good, they’ll help. He doesn’t take them often enough to form an immunity, so you should be set for at least 12 hours.”

Steve looked aghast. “You mean, it gets worse than this?”

Bruce sighed. “Of course it does. There’s a hunk of metal embedded in his chest, for Christ’s sake!”

Clint, slow on the uptake, looked confused. “Wait, so the arc reactor hurts him? Why does he keep it in?”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “It keeps him alive,” she said in Steve’s deep tones. She turned back towards Steve. “How much does it hurt, scale of one to ten?”

“Ten,” Steve winced. “I can’t get a full breath in, the skin around it chafes like hell, and it feels like there’s little knives in my chest, not to mention the fact that it just  _ aches _ .”

Bruce looked contemplative. “How long ago did you take the meds?”

“Four hours?” There was a note of pain in Steve-as-Tony’s voice that they never heard from Tony.

 

“Then it’s as good as it’s getting, sorry, Steve.”

“Okay,” Steve breathed. “This is fine, this is manageable. Why does it hurt so much?”

“The  _ little knives  _ are probably the shrapnel. The breathing is because the reactor reduces Tony’s lung capacity by about twenty percent, the chafing has to do with the hard casing being immovable, rooted in bone rather than muscle, and the ache is the damaged nerves on his sternum.” Bruce recited, detached. He thought he had known how much pain Tony was in. It was never more apparent how wrong he had been.

“What is shrapnel?” Thor asked.

“Tiny slivers of metal,” Clint spoke softly. “How did this happen?”

Natasha was the one to reply this time. “Afghanistan. I don’t know much, because Tony never shared, but I know the basics.” She took a deep breath. Her emotions weren’t as hidden on Steve’s face, and the rest of the team saw how much it affected her. “A bomb went off next to him, filling his chest with shrapnel. Somehow, he underwent surgery in the cave, and a car battery was put in to keep the shrapnel in place, stopping it from shredding his heart. He built the first arc reactor and replaced the car battery with it. He never said how he got the surgery, but he has mentioned another prisoner in passing, so it’s likely that that’s who operated on him.”

Even Clint, hardened SHIELD agent as he was, looked shocked. “How come we never knew?”

“Because I didn’t want to share,” Thor’s voice filled the space as Tony reappeared in a flash of green. “Because it’s traumatic, because it’s upsetting, because I didn’t want to look weak, take your pick.” He glared at Natasha, the expression off coming from Thor’s face. “That wasn’t for you to share,  _ Natalie _ .” 

 

Natasha looked slightly guilty. “We’re your team, we should know if you’re in pain.”

 

“Well, congratulations!” Tony snarked. “Now you know how fucking weak I am!” He left without another word or glare, just disappearing into the elevator. 

 

“Well, fuck.”

 

\-----

 

It took only about ten more hours for the spell to wear off.

 

Ten hours of Steve writhing in pain as soon as the team left him alone, ten hours of Tony failing to get drunk (thanks, Asgardian metabolism!), just ten general hours of suffering.

 

Ten hours had been long enough for Tony to forget the pain, though, and being thrown back into his aching body reminded him how weak he was. The drugs had worn off, leaving Tony feeling exhausted, with itches at the edge of his mind begging for another dose.

 

Breathing was overrated anyway, Tony thought waspishly to himself as he struggled to take a full breath.

 

As Tony struggled, JARVIS piped up an announcement. “Sir, Captain Rogers has ordered a team meeting in the conference room,” the AI said apologetically. “I am required to inform you that it is mandatory and he threatened to call Miss Potts if you do not attend.”

 

“Would Pep be on my side on this, you think?” Tony asked.

 

JARVIS’s tone sounded wryly amused when he said, “No, Sir, I believe that she would drag you to this meeting by the ear.”

 

“I’m going, I’m going,” Tony said, shutting down the project he had been idly chipping away at.

 

Tony had gotten used to Thor’s body, so his own felt awkward, to say the least. The pain in his chest flared up with every breath and he could feel some of his ribs pulsing (probably broken, but that was a problem for another day, or never). His fingers itched for a bottle of painkillers, but he knew that that was addiction talking, and he couldn’t let himself get dependent. Not again.

 

“I’m here,” Tony announced, walking into the conference room, mask in place. He turned on his megawatt smile that he gave the press. Only Bruce seemed to register that it wasn’t at all real.

 

“Man of Iron!” Thor boomed. “I am glad to see you restored!” 

 

Tony smirked. “I’m pretty sure you’re just glad I’m out of your body, Point Break,”

 

“Tony,” Steve said, serious. “We have to have a talk about… you know-”

 

Tony cut him off. “We actually don’t, Cap,” he said lightly. “It doesn’t affect my performance in the field- never has, never will. It’s a minor discomfort, and I don’t need your pity.” 

 

Steve looked unbearably sad. “Tony,” he whispered. “I don’t care because it could affect you on the field, I care because you’re my  _ friend _ .”

 

Tony took an involuntary step back, eyes darting around like he was looking for an escape. “Ha, funny joke,” he said tightly. “I’m going to go work now, bye.”

 

Before he could run out, Natasha grabbed his arm, quick as a viper. “Antoshka,” she said softly. “It's not a joke.” Coming from Natasha, Tony knew, an admission of friendship was a rare, rare thing. But logic couldn’t always override emotion, and Tony had dealt with fake friends a few times too many.

 

“Natasha, let go of me,” Tony said lowly. Natasha instantly let go, but moved in front of the door so Tony couldn’t leave. Well, the windows were always a viable option, and he was pretty sure a suit would catch him before he hit the ground.

“Tony, why is it so hard to believe that we’re your friends?” Bruce chimed in.

 

Tony shook his head. “Because I don’t fucking deserve it,” he muttered brokenly. “I’m a fucking murderer, you all don’t need that shit dragging you down. I have more issues than Vogue, and trust me, they’re much uglier.”

 

“You’re not a murderer,” Clint growled. “You ran a perfectly legitimate and necessary business. You armed American soldiers. There’s nothing  _ wrong  _ with that, you idiot. Stane wasn’t your fault, and you’ve more than made up for what that bastard did.”

 

“You did good things, Tony,” Steve added. “Weapons are actually necessary, and yours were the best. You  _ reduced  _ casualties and collateral damage, Tony, you’re not a murderer.”

 

Tony looked like he was going to cry. “You don’t have to lie, you know,” he said casually. “I’m not going to kick you out of the Tower or anything. I know I’m fucked up. Its fine.”

 

Natasha snarled and grabbed Tony’s hand (lightly, so he could pull away if he wanted). “It's movie time,” she said angrily. “We are going to watch a movie and you’re going to braid my hair and do whatever you need to do to understand that you’re my fucking friend or else I will slit your throat in your sleep.”

 

Tony gulped. “Whatever you say, Nat,” he said easily. He let her drag him out of the conference room as she angrily berated him in Russian. The whole team saw the small (real) smile on his face.

 

Maybe this could work out, after all.

 

**Author's Note:**

> what did you think?
> 
> prompts welcome!
> 
> comments and kudos keep me from sacrificing myself to satan
> 
> <3


End file.
